ABSTRACT
The adherents of the Russian imperial model, despite their criticism of Stalin's pre-1939 domestic policies, have essentially embraced Stalin's discriminatory approach to nationalities and religious groups. There has been a close relationship, especially since World War II, between the Soviet perception and treatment of the nationalities problem on the one hand and the Kremlin's religious policies on the other. Close parallels can be established between the twists and turns of Soviet nationalities policy and the meandering course of the Kremlin's religious policy, especially in the non-Russian borderlands of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. On the basis of the indicators it is possible to classify the institutional religions represented in the Soviet Union under the following principal categories: the imperial Church; national Churches; traditional native sects; transnational religious communities; ethnoreligious diasporas; and modern cosmopolitan sects. Soviet religious policy and antireligious propaganda have long displayed an acute awareness of the mutually supportive and protective roles of national and religious sentiments.
